AP - Toxicology tests show that the driver of a charter bus that crashed on a rural Northern California road, killing nine, was not drunk or on drugs at the time, prosecutors said Tuesday.

AP - A man indicted this month on charges of setting a fire that killed a woman and eight children at a birthday sleepover said he would never do anything to harm a child, and that he felt the same pain as relatives of the victims.

AP - A federal judge Tuesday approved a $24 million settlement for owners of dogs and cats who were sickened or died after eating pet food contaminated with an industrial chemical.

AP - The first inmate to die by lethal injection in Ohio in more than a year argued to the end that his obesity would make it difficult for prison staff to find suitable veins in his arms to deliver the deadly chemicals.

AP - The mother of a missing Florida 3-year-old wept as her attorney told reporters she is innocent and going through a "nightmare."

AP - Flames whirled dangerously close to homes Tuesday as gusty Santa Ana winds sent the biggest of southern California's wildfires flaring in hilly brushlands on Los Angeles' northern edge and along subdivisions to the west.

AP - An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide. A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

AP - Ohio executed a 5-foot-7, 267-pound double murderer Tuesday who argued his obesity made death by lethal injection inhumane.